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Monday, 4 February 2008

A love of words

Breath: ceramic tablet (intentionally broken) 1993

I was visiting Francesca's blog and lo and behold, we both share an unusual collecting habit... word and phrases from books. Read her post here.and you can see how she keeps her sentences in book form. Here's how I keep mine...

a little packet of words about animals

my packets of words (they usually hang on a pin board)

I was typing up a comment to her and realised I should get double value by using it here also...

Hi Francesca, I love your book of words and sentences. I do this too but mine are in little hand made packets each with with a themes like nature, interiors, animals, thoughts. I't's obsessive stuff isn't it. If I can't cut them up I write them down, but there's something about having the actual page that feels extra special. I have some great one's from a cheesy crime thriller where they described the scenes of the crimes brilliantly describing chandeliers, echoing rooms with faded curtains... so beautiful out of context.

I agree, weather related snippets can be really lovely. I especially like ones set in countries where the winds have beautiful names like Levanter, Mistral and Simoon (Levanter was on my list of loved words in '06). It's all I can do to keep the scissors away from Mr P's Patrick O'Brian books, they have lots of weather references many of which are nautical which adds to the appeal, and all said in lovely early 19th century language.

Lol! I do this too but I'm not half as organised so I've little phrases scribbled in notebooks all over the place and yeah a few cut up pieces too which I use to make collages. I hate destroying books though, I only cut up magazines!

miss milkii know, cutting up books is the haredst thing, i only do it if they are already ruined in some way, usually they have been found on buses, disguarded because of torn pages or swollen by coffee spills (which i think looks wonderful). i only once bought a book in good condition specifically to cut up, it was called something like 'man and the environment' and it had lots of sentences that were specific to the environmental nature of my work - i still feel guilty about it!

I like Francesca's way of doing it where she has 3 copies and cuts one, I'd have felt less guilty about it if I'd had an intact copy.

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Me, M.E. and Gardening

I still have M.E/CFS so my walking life & most of my creative endeavours are on hold and even the garden has had to mostly look after itself since 2013 but previous years of good planning mean it does pretty well and the birds, bees, hedgehogs and other creatures here prefer a slightly unkempt space. I photograph it when I can in order to capture it's changing delights.